Melanie Porter
Melanie Porter was a character in Mafia III. Owner of the small pet shop Melanie's Menagerie, she is perhaps better remembered for a secret she has been keeping from the town for years: She is actually a werewolf. Backstory Melanie was born and raised in Aifam Cove, where her love for animals eventually led her to open her own pet shop. This love also prompted her to frequently wander the nature trails in the thick forest north of town. A few years before the start of the game, Melanie was attacked and bitten by an unknown werewolf presumably living in that forest. She made a full recovery, but gained lycanthropy in the process. Afraid that the townsfolk would mistake her for one of the more commonly-known violent werewolves and turn against her, she chose to keep her condition a secret. Main RP Melanie is at first understandably horrified by the deaths, both those instigated by the Mafias and the snap-decision executions. Over the course of the game, her fear gives way to anger and she becomes more and more determined to stop the carnage once and for all. On the morning following Enna Tweff's death, Melanie is at first unaware of the murder and begins to check the animals in the Menagerie before opening her shop as usual. It isn't until her assistant Damien comes in to open the shop and discovers the news broadcast covering the event that she is alerted. Though she only knew Enna in passing, Melanie chooses to attend her funeral. When Christopher Dylans' body is discovered, she is at first unsure how to proceed due to conflicting orders from prominent townsfolk, but eventually decides to get away from the chaotic scene and return to her shop. She is soon joined by several other characters, one of whom is looking for a new fish while others want supplies so they may care for found pets. She identifies one such animal as Merry, who had been Enna's dog, and is happy to hear that Beatrice is willing to adopt her. Throughout all this, Melanie is agitated because the first night of the full moon is to be that night. Though she ordinarily spends such nights locked in her house, she decides to spend this one in the forest where she can exercise and relieve some of the stress of the past few days. On the way there, she comes across the scene surrounding Khiran and Mr. Stal's deaths, and then learns from Damien that Lindsey has been outed as a Mafioso and executed. Horrified both at Lindsey's guilt and Damien's involvement in a vigilante execution, she makes a run for the forest, where she changes into her wolf form and is able to temporarily relax while away from the chaos in the town. The next morning, the town's power has gone out and Melanie finds herself waking up in a too-cold Menagerie. As she scrambles to make sure the animals are all right, Dr. Parker and Anna visit the shop, the former to help her with the animals while the latter gives her the news that Aaron has been killed and asks for his address so that she may check on his rabbit Trixie. Anna leaves after getting the information she needs, and Melanie and Evan begin to discuss the recent events. They are interrupted by the lynching of Anna, which both witness. This latest senseless death infuriates Melanie, who silently vows to root out and take down the Mafias in order to stop both their own killings and those caused by the panic they have instigated. Melanie joins the rest of the town in the morgue, and joins the makeshift investigative team working with Aaron's collected papers. They go to City Hall to speak with the mayor, but after waiting for far too long while even more murders happen just outside, Melanie decides she's had enough and breaks down the door in an effort to see him. Considering that the mayor turns out to be a rock, while his now-ghostly assistant Jack is by this point refusing to help, all this ends up getting the makeshift team nowhere. The papers are still too illegible to give any help either, and as the night approaches Melanie decides to change tactics and take advantage of the full moon to patrol the streets in her wolf form. But of course, this turns out to be the one night that nobody is attacked. When she leaves the Menagerie the next morning, leaving Damien in charge for the day to keep him out of trouble and give her a chance to start investigating again, she comes across the bodies of Christopher and Fella and learns that the latter had been caught trying to eat the corpse of the former. While mourning over Fella's foolishness and subsequent death, she overhears her other assistant Marco announcing the murder of Piper. When she hears that Piper had a gun by her side, she becomes suspicious and decides to check out the body for possible clues. She runs across Piper's ghost and tries to get information about her killers out of her. Before she can give any useful information, though, Piper becomes distracted by her missing camera and runs off, inadvertently revealing her place in the Abominable Aifam in the process. Enraged, Melanie chases after Piper for a long time, but Piper eventually loses her. Melanie then heads back to the shop to try and piece together the information she's gathered into anything meaningful, and while there learns that Professor Bardsley has just been outed as a member of Chill of the Night and executed. She realizes that, having both been on the makeshift investigation team, Bardsley and Piper must have been finding and hiding those notes of Aaron's that did have legible useful information. That night, the third and final full moon of the cycle, Melanie goes out on another patrol. She discovers Trixie out in the cold and brings her to Evan's office, and later discovers Winston's body after he's been killed. Exhausted from how active she's been in the past three nights and upset at having failed to save Winston, she considers going to the movie screening the next day but ends up going home to catch up on sleep instead. She is awoken by the town's mad chase after Morty Gunderson. After Alma catches her up on his disastrous stunt with the movie theater, she agrees to join the chase and try to head him off. In her fevered determination to catch up to him, she triggers a "voluntary" shift to her wolf form by accident. Realizing that she just inadvertently revealed her secret to most of the town, she panics and flees for the woods. By the time she begins to calm down, she learns that Winter's Wrath has succeeded in cowing and taking over Aifam Cove. Her anger and determination returning, Melanie realizes that people knowing she's a werewolf is going to be the least of anyone's worries and that her condition could be used to benefit the oppressed town. With these thoughts in mind, she follows Lucille's call to form a resistance. Half a year later, Melanie is still a prominent member of the rebellion. She has been forced to hide out in the woods and stay in her more powerful wolf form most of the time because Winter's Wrath knows of her involvement in the rebellion and want her dead, but she has nevertheless managed to keep going and even heads a small sub-group of rebels who have voluntarily received lycanthropy from her (including Damien). Though times are hard, she is confident that the resistance will one day end the reign of Winter's Wrath once and for all. Other Appearances While Melanie has yet to appear directly in other NTWF RP games, she has had minor appearances and references in other NTWF events. Medieval Like several Mafia III characters, Melanie is implied to be a distant later relative to her writer's Medieval character. Specifically, references regarding Clarissa Falconer suggest that her sister, Emelyne, is Melanie's ancestor. Free Rice In this small-scale event based off of a website of the same name, Sporty's team chose to base its name off of their Mafia III player characters. The team was called "Travis Richem and the Nature Chicks" after Melanie, Travis Richem, and Piper Bordeaux. The story given for this team is that some time after the events of Mafia III, Travis decided to form a band for a "charity concert" and somehow convinced Piper (a fellow Mafioso) and Melanie (whose rebellion saw this as an opportunity to get intel on the Mafia) to join him. It is undecided whether this event is canon to the main storyline. Liar's Game Melanie makes a very brief appearance in Liar's Game, a non-rp Mafia game in which one of the deadly neutral roles was a Werewolf. She is agitated by the presence of a rogue werewolf, and insists on staying out of the Splatterboard for fear that their presence will discolor the town's opinion of her. Unlike previous appearances, which take place in the main storyline canon, this event takes place in the NTWF itself and she is clearly stated to be a "character." Relationships Damien Damien is one of Melanie's employees and close friends. He frequently calls her "Boss" and ultimately takes charge of the Menagerie when Melanie is forced to leave Aifam Cove. He eventually joins the anti-mafia rebellion and is the only known member to have joined Melanie's werewolf posse. Marco Marco is one of Melanie's employees. Evan Parker Doctor Parker, being a veterinarian, is well-acquainted with Melanie due to his frequent visits to check the health of the pets in her shop. He was also the one to treat her after her attack by the werewolf in the forest, and because of this is the only other person to know of her condition prior to her reveal to the town near the end of the game. They are very close because of this. Category:Mafia III characters